After The Fall
by GougeAway
Summary: "Castiel? Really? That's one weird name, sugar, no offence." Castiel finds Meg alive and reborn on Earth as a human girl - as a result of being unable to enter Heaven or Hell. There's just one catch. She can't remember anything. Welcome to my first attempt to write something that doesn't end in tears. Megstiel, with mentions of Sam and Dean.
1. Chapter 1

**After The Fall**

_"Remember me? I sure remember you, Clarence."_

* * *

She's worked in this bar since she was eighteen, and she's well used to the looks by now. The leers, the wolf whistles; the flirtations of lonely, drunken men who never want to go home just yet. She's seen it all, and after six years of it, it doesn't bother her a whole lot anymore.

But the unflinching, thousand yard stare of this man is a little much, even for her and her nerves of stainless steel.

She'd noticed him an hour or so ago. If she hadn't grown up in this backwater town with the name of every local face imprinted in the back of her eyes, he probably wouldn't have stood out so much. Maybe it was the tan coloured trench coat. Maybe it was the presence of the two greying men who sat in the booth with him - probably his uncles, or perhaps one of them was his father. As it happens, she had never seen them around here before, and somehow, through the roar of drunken laughter and the taste of desperation in the air around her, they cut through it all and stood out to her in the strangest way.

One of the older guys had approached the bar soon after their arrival, and she saw he wasn't so old. The strong, chiselled features of his face and the dimple in his smile somewhat betrayed the crows feet around his green eyes and the silver in his hair. He winked at her and asked for three beers. And as she nodded her acknowledgement and turned to collect three glasses and pull the tap, she found herself a little amused that there was such a thing as young old men. In this town, there were none. The old came here to die, and the young tended to avoid the place altogether. She placed the three pints on the scarred oak surface of the bar as he handed the money over, and with a world-weary smile and a thank you he had turned and headed back over towards his booth, with who appeared to be his brother and the young man with the tan coloured trench coat and sad eyes.

Her shift wears on. Drunk old men ask for whiskey, call her sweet cheeks; the few that don't look at her like a piece of meat ask her how her father. She gives a tight lipped smile and tells them she doesn't know, and boredly stares out at the darkening sky from the left window.

* * *

She hears a voice from behind her left shoulder asking for three more beers, please. It's deep and gravely, and something about it makes her ache. It sounds a little familiar, even though she's sure it's not the voice of any of the locals. She turns around to tell him she's on it, and before she can even form the words, her voice dies in her throat.

The man in the tan coat is standing on the other side of this bar, and the look he's giving her is one of the most unfathomable she's ever seen. His features are sharp, with high cheekbones and a well-defined jaw covered with slight stubble. His mouth's hanging open slightly, and she thinks somehow, maybe, she already knows the feel of his lips against hers.

His eyes are a dark blue. She knows because they're looking down at her with such profound intensity that, irrationally, she wants to both look away and drown in them. They're like oceans under stormy skies.

And she can see it. Those eyes, they howl. There is some untended pain there; a sort of grief in the way he looks at her that she doesn't understand. He looks like he's seen a ghost, and if she could just find her breath and remember herself, she would snap her fingers at him and tell him to cut it out.

The strangest thing about this is that she knows she's probably looking at him in exactly the same way. There's a terrible sense of finality; of loose ends left untied and good left undone in the air between them - herself and this _stranger_ - and she can't put her finger on what it is.

But now she feels a twist on her lips and the quirk of her eyebrow, and hears her own voice cut through the roaring in her ears.

"If you keep looking at me like that, sugar, you'll make me all dewy." And with shaking hands she turns away and busies herself with pouring three beers. Her smirk still rests on her face when she turns back to place the drinks on the bar between them, and the man, this stranger, seems to have followed her example and has crafted his expression into something like distant politeness. She thinks it's maybe his default expression.

And so she tells him how much that'll be, and he hands her the money, and she runs it through the till before handing him back his change. He thanks her slowly before carrying his drinks back to his table, and she thinks with a degree of sardonic amusement that it's the most honest gratitude she's ever heard.

* * *

They've been looking at her, she realizes. Between serving customers and discreetly painting her nails beneath the sambuca shelf, she's occasionally glanced up at their table and noticed them deep in conversation.

They look pretty serious, she muses. One of the older guys, the tallest one with long-ish, grey-brown hair looks surprised. His mouth's hanging open and his big, wide eyes are flickering between the tan-coat man and her own direction. The other one, who came up to the bar earlier tonight, looks concerned. The smile she saw on his tired face earlier has been replaced by furrowed eyebrows and a fast moving mouth. She can't hear what he's saying, but it looks pretty damn serious. He keeps looking at her too.

She'd be annoyed, usually. She's used to the lecherous looks and the way the gears turn in men's heads when she's the only girl in the bar. And if it were any other time, her legs would be stalking towards their table and her sharp silver tongue would be ripping them to pieces before her mind had a chance to catch up with her mouth.

But the man with the ocean blue eyes looks like he's had the ground pulled out from beneath his feet, and she's got the strangest feeling in the pit of her stomach that this is an entirely different kind of conversation altogether.

* * *

"Could I have a Disaronno, please?"

She pulls her dark head away from the soft comfort of her forearms and straightens up. "Sure," she replies, and looks at those blue eyes for the most fleeting of seconds before she closes her calloused little fingers around a glass and thinks, _why not,_ and pours him a double.

When she turns to hand him the glass, she's surprised to see he's taken a seat at one of the bar stools, and sits just close enough that she can taste his last beer on his breath. He doesn't look drunk in the slightest. The grief she saw in him earlier is less pronounced now, and instead he's looking at her with a measure of curiosity.

"Double's on me," she says, and feels a corner of her mouth tugging upwards involuntarily.

He tilts his head slightly, and something in her chest twists and turns. "Why?" he asks, dark brows furrowing just a little and his too blue eyes searching her face.

She shrugs. "Why not?" she replies, and shoots him a quick wink. She thinks his face softens a little, then, but his careful politeness returns before she can discern it.

"I'll have a Southern Comfort and coke as well, please," he says slowly, and he looks a little anxious, as if he's testing waters she can't see.

"You got good taste, sweet pea. That's my favourite."

"I know." She turns to look at him from over her shoulder, eyebrow quirked and eyes glittering, and he shakes his head a little, correcting the slip. "Lucky guess. It's on me."

Despite herself, she's utterly intrigued. "Well, thanks sugar." She pours herself the drink and takes a long sip, eyeing him over the glass. He's looking at her and his expression is unreadable. She sets the glass down on the scarred oak surface of the bar and rests her elbows down in front of him, dark curls settling on her arms. "What's your name anyway, stranger?"

He takes a drink from his glass, and she wonders if he's hesitating, before he sets it back down and replies. "Castiel," he says, and she feels an eyebrow raise before she can stop herself.

"Castiel? Really? That's one weird name, sugar, no offence." And she can see in his face that he's taken none. He looks kind of amused more than anything else.

"That's nothing. This one girl used to call me Clarence." He's looking at her sort of expectantly, and she wonders if he's waiting for some sort of reaction.

"Why Clarence?" she asks. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she feels the name slide off her tongue in the strangest way, her mouth forming the syllables as if it was what she was born to do. It feels nice.

The man – Castiel - looks down at his glass and a corner of his mouth turns up a little, almost a smile, and there's a sadness in it that moves something in her. "An obsession with an old movie," he says, and his deep voice is laced with fondness. She finds herself wondering who this girl was that had such an obvious hold on him, and wonders where she is now. "I don't see the fuss. I watched it myself and wasn't impressed." And he looks back up at her, and asks what her name is.

She tells him her name is Megan, and she wonders what exactly he sees in her when he smiles – a _real _smile, not a polite, obligatory one or a sad half smile, but a real, full faced grin – and says, "I thought you looked like a Meg."

And he orders another drink and stays still in his seat. Megan takes care of other customers as more locals pile through the door, occasionally glancing at Castiel as she busies herself between pouring drinks and managing the cash till.

He watches her too.

* * *

A/N: To chapter fic or not to chapter fic? Hmmm. One-shots are my thing, but I've deliberately left it at this point here so it can go either way. I hate doing this, but feedback in the form of reviews would be seriously helpful. I've got a skeleton plot to work on if I decide to add more chapters.

This was in response to a review I got from a guest reviewer called 'Elise' on another Megstiel story, asking if I could write a Megstiel fic in the style of another fan fiction I've written for Bleach. In that fanfic, one character finds another reincarnated and there's sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere. So I thought, what the hell, and tried it out. Hopefully this works as a good piece of writing in it's own right, without brutalising the other fan fiction. I don't want it to be like the other fic. It needs to be something altogether different, and that's where the idea of making it a fully fledged chapter fic comes in.

Anyway, enough self-absorbed rambling. Hope you enjoyed this, and thanks for being wee gems and reading it this far!


	2. Chapter 2

**After The Fall**

**Chapter 2**

_"I'm kinda good, which sucks. _

_And you're kinda bad...which is actually all manner of hot."_

* * *

"It's Meg."

He watches the smile on Dean's face slip away as confusion takes its place, and sees Sam's grey-flecked eyebrows furrow and his head tilt questioningly across the booth from him. He watches as Dean's mouth forms words – _what? Cas? What? _– but he can't hear them. He can't hear anything over the roaring in his ears.

He doesn't know how he could have possibly looked past her the instant he entered this place. Had he looked over, had he merely _glanced_ at her face upon pushing the bar door open and setting foot inside, he would surely have known.

But he hadn't noticed her. Instead, he'd walked onwards and sat in a booth on the other side of the room with his brothers; smiling, joking, laughing, and oblivious to the fact that when this hour ended and it came his turn to buy the next round of drinks, nothing in his life would ever be the same again. He had simply sat there, so frighteningly unaware of her existence, and of how something so simple as standing from his seat and approaching the bar would be the start of an unstoppable movement.

And then the unremarkable bargirl had tiredly pulled her head away from the confines of her pale arms and shifted to meet his eyes, and he felt something twist and turn like a tidal wave in Jimmy Novak's chest.

Her hair fell in dark waves past the peach toned skin of her shoulders. She was a little taller than he remembered her, but she still had to pull her head back to look up at him; the sharp angles of her cheekbones and the lines of her jaw exposed in the dim light. Her eyes were slate grey. They had stared back at him, wide and unblinking, her thick eyelashes casting shadows across the contours of her pale face and the tired, slightly purple skin beneath her eyes.

She didn't look quite the same. Her hair was a little shorter, her skin was a little lighter, and she looked a little tired. But he knew. The colour of her eyes had changed, but they were the same eyes he remembered. He saw the same face, the same soul behind them that he had always seen. She felt somehow brighter now, like a slate wiped clean by some divine hand, but with a rush of burning nostalgia he found that if he looked hard enough – if he really, really _looked_ – he could still see that all of that thorny pain in her. That surreptitious melancholy, that had always seemed to exist just behind the shine of her eyes and the sarcasm on her tongue, had clung to her like a ghost and followed her here.

He had stared, and she had stared right back. And before he could even begin to doubt the reality of the situation, she had quirked her dark eyebrow at him and her lips had twisted into _that smile_.

"_If you keep looking at me like that, sugar, you'll make me all dewy."_

The fire and steel of that voice alone were enough to anchor him to the world.

"Cas!"

He hears a snapping noise in front of him and the roaring in his ears stops. Dean withdraws his clicked fingers and looks at him expectantly, Sam's expression mirroring his brother's.

"It's Meg," Castiel repeats. His throat feels hoarse.

"What do you mean?" Dean asks impatiently, his smile from mere minutes ago replaced by a wary frown.

"I mean that that girl who has served us alcohol for the past hour is Meg." It sounds ridiculous, he suddenly realises, even to his own ears.

Deans eyebrows almost disappear into his hairline. "You're saying she survived? She survived that attack from Crowley?"

"Dean, keep it down," Sam interjects, discreetly pointing in the bargirl's direction. Her lithe back is turned to them and she looks like she's doing something to her nails. She's not within earshot, but Castiel knows if Dean gets any louder their little table will be getting some strange looks. "Cas." Sam's voice is hushed. "Are you saying Meg didn't die and found a new meatsuit?" His expression is a strange mix of disbelief and sympathy. Castiel doesn't like it much.

"I'm saying she did. Meg died." It's the first time he's said it aloud. He almost doesn't. Almost can't. She stands mere feet away from him, and Castiel is still mourning her.

"Then what?" Dean asks. "Did she somehow escape he- wherever Death sent her?"

The angel casts his eyes to the man in front of him, appreciative of his last minute correction. The subject has always been a delicate one, and while Castiel has steel nerves and an unconquerable force of will, he cannot fool Dean. Dean has seen the look on his face in his darkest times and knows that hell is the last place he ever wants to imagine her - no matter how many times his mind has tried to tell him that in all logic and probability, it was where she had gone.

"No." He struggles to find the words that can accurately convey this situation. He can barely wrap his own head around it. "She is Meg. She is Meg's soul. Reborn as a human."

Sam stares at him, the lines of his skin setting in a frown. "Is that possible?"

"I wasn't sure until now." Castiel shifts his eyes to watch the brunette as she works. Her actions are lazy and elegant all at once; a kind of movement that had seemed to define her from the first time he'd ever laid eyes on her. To Castiel, who is older than mankind and retains millennia – _eons –_ worth of memories, the feel of her pressed against him and the gleam of the fire in her eyes that night feels like entire lifetimes ago. "There have always been stories of souls being unable to enter heaven or hell, and who were allowed to be reincarnated and given an additional human life in order to determine where they should be sent after it. Until now, I thought they were only stories."

He knows it sounds far-fetched even as he says it, and he can tell by the brothers faces that it sounds ridiculous to them too. To them, who have fought all manner of monsters; who have jumpstarted and averted the apocalypse; who once locked the devil in a cage and accepted a rogue angel as a member of their family, the thought of Meg Masters being too good a soul to rot in hell is unbelievable.

He's only trying to reason with them, but he can't completely filter out the bitter tone that escapes his throat. "Is it really so difficult for you to believe that the person who sacrificed herself to let you escape Crowley and attempt to close the gates of Hell, knowing full well you meant for her to be trapped with the rest of her kind, deserves a second chance?"

There's a silence between them. Sam glances towards the girl, and Castiel thinks he sees some soft expression cross his aging features before he turns to look him in the eye, and says, "I believe it." He can't quite decipher the look he sees on Sam's face. It's not quite sympathy, or sorrow, but more of a quiet type of understanding. He feels a sudden rush of appreciation for this brother of his, and before he can focus on the prickling feeling that Sam knows something he doesn't, Dean speaks.

"I'm not saying she didn't do us a good turn back there, Cas." His voice sounds almost apologetic and Castiel doesn't particularly like the direction this appears to be headed in. Dean's looking at Cas carefully, but Cas can see through Dean. He knows Dean still carries unspeakable grief. He knows Dean has lost many things, and he knows how at least some of those things were taken from him. "But you've gotta understand the likelihood of that theory being the real thing. She saved us back there. I know. We're grateful. But it doesn't change what she did." Dean looks away then. Clears his throat and warily looks back to Castiel. "It's not for me to judge her anymore, Cas, but if it was-" he cuts himself short. He doesn't finish. Castiel doesn't want him to.

"If you say it's her, then I believe you," Sam's voice cuts through the uncomfortable silence. "But how do you know?"

"I can see her," he replies, and despite the severity of the situation he can't stop the corners of his mouth tugging upwards and the rising sound of wonder in his throat. "Almost the way I could see her true face as a demon. I just looked past it and I saw her there." He leaves out the part where he's sure that even if he were just some normal human man, and not a celestial being with supernatural contact lenses, he'd recognise her anywhere purely from the feel of her soul wrapped around his own.

* * *

It's hours later when he feels the cool Wisconsin air kiss his skin. A half moon shines down from a starless sky, and for all of Castiel's divine power and celestial understanding, he still wonders at the beauty of something as simple as the way the white contrasts and completes the black so starkly.

Megan hadn't been behind the bar when they'd left. He'd half-waited for her to appear, but she seemed to have been the only member of staff working tonight and he supposed she was preoccupied with other duties, besides serving whiskey to old men in the trailing early hours of the morning.

It was just as well, he decides. If he had stayed in that bar stool talking to her all night, he doesn't think he could have left her there.

They stand at the impala now, none of them drunk. Nobody has made an attempt to climb into the warmth of the car, and there's silence in the air between them; a sense of finality that he both regrets and welcomes.

"So?" Dean asks. His voice is rough, but if Castiel knows his brother at all, he knows it's just the cracks in his battle worn armour. His tone sounds disapproving and almost cutting, but the angel sees the small smile in the lines of his world-weary face. This is difficult for him, just as it is difficult for Castiel. Sam watches them amusedly, the light of the moon glinting on the gold around his left ring finger. Castiel turns to look at him, and sees the sort of open acceptance he's rarely found in any other person. Sam understands. He always did.

And Castiel can see in their faces that they know exactly what he's going to do.

"I'm staying," he says, and when Dean's face breaks out into a genuine grin, he can't stop his own.

"You are one stupid son of a bitch, Cas. And good on you." And then Dean laughs, and he sounds young again. Sam stands shoulder to shoulder with his brother, and the grin rapidly spreading across his aged features speaks volumes.

Any doubts Castiel has about how this could impact upon their friendship are instantly washed away. Even after decades together, to the point where Dean and Sam are now frequently mistaken for a greying father and uncle, they are still his brothers. They have been pillars of strength for each other in the darkest of days, and have mourned their losses and celebrated their victories together. They are family, and the first two people Castiel ever consciously loved, and who consciously loved him in return. They have gone through hell for each other, and would do it again a thousand times over without question.

And so it's with only some sadness that Castiel watches his brothers drive away. Dean smiles at him from the driver side of the car as the impala moves on, towards the direction of Sam's sleeping wife, and then on to greener pastures. Castiel knows it's not the end for them. It never is.

* * *

A/N: My god. Look, I just want to apologise profusely if that last scene is cheesy as all hell. It's 5.08am, I've spent all night finishing some goddamn essay, and then I wanted to just do this while I still had it mapped out in my head, and as a result it's gotten to the end of the chapter and I'm in no real state to properly assess it. But I really want to post it so I will anyway. I needed to effectively veto the winbros from the story without outright ignoring them, because that's just rude and totally dismissive. I mean, they will of course be mentioned or perhaps make appearances at some point again, but Cas needs to busta move on Meg without a couple of old guys cramping his style. Anyway, really hope it didn't come off all lameo cliché.

Thank you so, so much to everyone who's supported this story. I thought I'd be doing well if I got 3 reviews, so I'm astounded. I really appreciate everyone who has reviewed, favourited, or added it to alerts! You are a wonderful bunch of people and you've really encouraged and inspired me to go the whole way with this fic. As always, your reviews/favourits/alerts are what keep me motivated and on the right track.

Now it's time for some shameless self-advertising. I have two Megstiel one-shots posted if anyone's interested in reading them – they're a lot angstier than this story but if you feel like giving them a quick read, that would be very kind. Best read while crying alone in your bathroom and eating Ben and Jerry's.

I'm bored of the sound of my own voice now, so bye bye, and good morning.


	3. Chapter 3

**After The Fall**

**Chapter 3**

_"Yes, I remember the pizza man. And it's a good memory."_

* * *

When Castiel pays for an entire month's stay in cash, the middle-aged man behind the motel desk looks at him strangely.

"A whole month?" he asks, his straggly grey beard quivering as he speaks, his large fingers flicking through the bundle of fifty dollar bills Castiel has thrust upon the counter between them.

"Yes, a month at least," he replies as he glances around the small room. A moth-eaten, yellow couch sags in the corner, where a scarred wooden coffee table rests in front of it. Castiel wonders absently if the couch has always been yellow, and if anyone has ever tried to get the coffee stains out of the thinning blue carpet.

"Is this legit?" the man asks, still thumbing through the pile of notes.

Castiel's eyebrows furrow and he looks at the man questioningly. "Yes," he replies slowly. Is there some sort of problem with the money? It was all the cash he had left from his travels with Dean, and while the money had been good enough for buying drinks at that bar - _her_ bar - a few hours previously, Castiel doubts Dean had obtained the money through entirely honest means.

The motel owner only lets out a low whistle as he finishes counting the bills, before chuckling somewhat gruffly. "Not from around here, son, are you?"

"I'm not really from anywhere," Castiel replies honestly, and the greying man holds up his meaty arms up in surrender.

"That's fine by me, boy, I don't mean ta' pry. Don't often get visitors as up-front as you, is all." While Castiel replays the last few minutes in his head, trying to discover if he could possibly have offended the man somehow, the man stands from behind his coffee stained desk and walks around it, and gestures to Castiel as he moves sluggishly towards the door. He turns the grubby handle and walks out into the cool night air, Castiel following behind him as the man wipes at a stain on his too-small shirt.

"You can take room three," he says, pulling a stack of plastic cards fastened by an elastic band from his pocket. He shuffles through them before handing the trench-coated man the key-card, and Castiel takes it obligingly. "I'm Don, by the way. You?"

"Castiel," he replies, and is too busy examining the key card in his hand to catch Don's bemused expression.

They walk along the buildings wooden porch, Castiel absently counting the doors they pass on the way - 7…6…5… - until they come to a stop outside a door labelled '3'. Don takes out a key card of his own and slides it through a side panel, the door making an audible click before he walks into the room, Castiel following behind him.

"Here you've got your bedroom," he smiles at Castiel toothily as he gestures towards the double bed in the far corner of the room, "with your bathroom through that door over there." Castiel eyes the room critically, taking in the beige coloured walls and the thin layer of dust over the worn orange carpet. Noticing Castiel's under-whelmed reaction, Don laughs nervously. "Could do with a spot of redecoratin', and it's a bit of a tight fit, but it's a cosy little space. Safe too. Y'got some manual locks on your side of the door as well, not just the automatic lock."

Castiel glances at the back of the door, more out of politeness than actual interest. There's a barrel slide lock, worn and slightly rusted, as well as a chain lock above it that has seen better days. He nods at Don in acknowledgement, choosing not to reply that he's an angel of the lord who could smight any unwitting trespasser without so much as blinking, and that, were he actually just an ordinary human male, he's not sure those scraps of fifty year old metal could save him anyway.

"Room seven's a communal kitchen," Don says, "with all your usual cooking stuff. Your room key works for there as well, but you're gonna have to buy your own food. This ain't a bed and breakfast, and I ain't no room service, so you can find any cleaning stuff in one of the cupboards in room seven too." If Castiel really was a human male who could be intimidated by faulty-looking door locks, he thinks he'd be developing a headache right about now. "'Course, rooms get cleaned once someone leaves. Your room's clean, though no-one's lived in it for a while so it's just a little musty. Open the window and you'll be good ta' go."

"Thank you," Castiel says, and there's a note of finality in his tone that makes Don close his mouth abruptly after opening it for whatever he was about to say next. He pauses before smiling widely at him again.

"Sure thing, son. You got any problems, I'll be right over in the office." Don makes a step towards the door and lingers between Castiel's room and the motel yard outside. "If I'm ever not there, you can get me by dialling 9 on your room phone on the wall over there. Gets me at my own house." Castiel nods and smiles politely, wishes Don a good night, and closes the door after him.

The click of the lock rings in his ears, and suddenly everything is quiet for the first time since he arrived in this town.

Knowing he doesn't sleep but feeling the overwhelming need to rest, he switches off the light, shrugs off his coat and falls onto the bed. He turns onto his back and stares up at the odd brown ceiling and wonders, not for the first time tonight, if the last few hours have really taken place and are not some illusion.

In all of the towns, in all of the cities, in all of the countries of this world, he has found her reborn and human and _alive_ in this one. In this backwater town that he stumbled across by pure chance after a routine hunt with the brothers. In this town where poverty is so common that a man paying more than twenty dollars cash for a motel room is a reason for raised eyebrows. In this town where the boarded windows of rundown houses look out upon darkened neighbourhoods; upon the streets where drunken men lie after stumbling from the seedy bars dotted across the district. In this town where men with scarred knuckles roar and swear and fight beneath the night sky – this town where the thick taste of blood slides down the back of his throat for every second longer he lingers on the precipice of violence.

She's here, alive, in this town that the world forgot. And he cannot leave her alone in this place.

His eyes slide closed and his breath evens to a slow and steady rhythm. Jimmy Novak's heart has finally stopped hammering against his chest and he can finally think rationally.

If she has no memory of her life before all of this, and is unable to remember him, then, Castiel thinks, he cannot interfere. He cannot prompt her. He cannot force her to remember. She is the same soul, and although Castiel knows that a soul retains all memory, he knows the human mind is fragile and unprepared for such an overwhelming experience. If he should push her too far, she would snap.

He's struck again with the realisation of how bizarre this is. He has tried for over two decades not to think of her, because to allow himself to think of her too much, for too long, would have been unwise. To obsess over what-could-have and what-should-have-beens; to wonder how things might have been between them if he had only gone back for her; to let that unbearable guilt at his own failure fester would have been too much for him to bear. To let himself replay the sound of her voice, and the way his calloused fingers had once wrapped around her smooth white wrist while she smiled at him with her delicately quirked eyebrow, would have been torture. To linger on the way her warm breath had once ghosted across his skin before she crushed her lips against his own would have been the surest form of suicide.

Now, he lies in a dirty motel room in an unfamiliar town, and lets the memory of her wash over him. He thinks of all the ways he can save her now, and decides resolutely that even if she doesn't need saving, he'll do it for her anyway. He has to this time, because he didn't before.

* * *

She doesn't think it has a face. It shifts and twists in front of her, never letting her eyes take it in, but somehow she knows its smile is bloodstained and its eyes are smouldering. She sees its vague form as if through some fog; limbs like black smoke curling through the air between them and dissipating into nothing if she stares too long.

She averts her eyes, and doesn't know why she feels like a scolded child.

"_It's okay,"_ she hears, and the voice leaves a strange static whispering in her ears. It's somehow too high and too low simultaneously, but it doesn't jar with her senses the way it should. _"I'm not angry with you, child,"_ it says, and there's such power in that voice that an instinctive spark of fear mixes with the inexplicable sense of comfort washing over her. His voice – _his_, this thing is male, she knows innately – holds a menacing undercurrent that she can't quite pinpoint, that should make her wary. But this voice is so soothing in its gentleness and familiarity that she wants to close her eyes and let it sink into her bones.

It feels like water, and she wants to drown in it. It's been too long since she was spoken to so tenderly by anyone, and in the back of her mind she thinks that she's maybe been waiting for this voice for her entire life.

She casts her eyes to the speaker and, with a strange stab of horror somewhere beneath her ribs, she sees the smoke has solidified into formidable, black iron bars. Orange eyes stare out at her from the darkness trapped behind them, and in those black pupils she sees herself reflected. She has a thousand faces and they twist and turn in the glint of this creatures eyes, too quickly and too painfully for her to keep up with. Somewhere in the distance, from what feels like entire worlds away, she hears a siren. It wails low and mournful.

"_I'm not angry,"_ says that voice, but there is no mouth. Its eyes lock on her, pleading, and she's struck by a sudden rush of sympathy for this creature. She has some understanding, a tiny grain of empathy at least, for this beautiful thing locked away and left forgotten in the dark. She knows something of that.

"_Child,"_ it says, and the siren picks up in the cold air that suddenly crashes against her skin. The wails grow louder, shriller; painful in her ears and she thinks she knows what might be about to happen and _no, no, no,_ she doesn't want to wake up because she can't bear the thought of that shrill ringing replacing this caring, intangible voice in her ear.

"_Let me out."_

The siren reaches breaking point and rips through her vision. Megan's eyes open and she fumbles for her phone somewhere beside her head. She finds the right button and the beeping of the alarm stops abruptly.

Early morning sunlight burns through the window in her room, and she finds herself missing the comforting nothingness of the dark. She averts her eyes and rolls over in her bed, cocooned in the warmth of the sheets, and wants to just lie here for a few minutes. The voice from that dream is quickly fading from her conscious memory, and irrationally she finds herself trying to cling to it the way, as a young child, she would cling to her mother's hand while crossing the street. It was a feeling of ultimate security, and one that she has tried to tell herself she's never needed or wanted since.

That rush of warmth when she thinks of her mother still flares now and then when she sees little girls and smiling mothers playing in the park on the other side of town, or sometimes when she finds herself helping her little sister with her homework. She feels it on mornings like this, when she wakes early to make her little sister's lunch before walking her to school, and she wonders if Jill feels that same rush of love for her that she did for her mother, in bygone days when her mother was there to help her with _her_ homework, to make _her_ lunch, to walk _her_ to school.

And then, sometimes, she sees children crying alone in shopping malls, lost and screaming, and the warm rush of feeling protected and loved twists into something sharper and burns in her throat.

There's a prickly feeling in the back of her eyes that she's not entirely familiar with, and Megan sits up abruptly, ripping herself away from the warmth of her bed, and places her bare feet on the worn blue carpet in some attempt to push it away.

* * *

"What d'you want on your sandwiches?" Megan asks, stifling a yawn and rubbing her eyes tiredly. Ten-year-old Jill kicks her bare heels off the edge of the couch, her eyes never leaving whatever old cartoon's playing on the television this morning, and says, "Sugar."

"Sugar what?"

"Sugar please," Jill turns and smiles, her blonde ponytail swishing across her shoulders as she turns to look at her sister.

"You're welcome, sugar," Megan winks back, and her grin dissolves into a genuine smile when she hears her sister giggle. She spreads the butter on both slices of bread before reaching for the sugar bowl and sprinkling a thin layer of sugar on one slice, slaps the other slice on top, and cuts down the middle. "There. Easiest person to cook for, ever." She packs the sandwich into Jill's little pink lunchbox with an apple and a juice-box and tosses it to a spot on the couch beside her sister.

"Thanks, Megan," her little sister says, before turning her brown eyes back to the television. She watches as Jill shifts, folding her tiny legs under her body and balancing her bowl of cereal precariously on her pyjama-clad knee, and Megan sees, not for the first time, how starkly Jill resembles their father. She's tall for her age, and this together with her fair hair and deep brown eyes and her straight nose leave no room for discussion as to who this child's father is.

Megan remembers how this scared her sometimes, years ago in what feels like another lifetime. How, as a toddler, Jill would laugh and giggle around their father as if sharing some private joke, would squeal with glee when he held her, and Megan would feel the drop in her stomach as she wondered if one monster had begotten another. If one day, Jill would look at her with the same icy resentment their father did. If one day she would fall victim to this child as she had fallen victim to its father.

And then one day, Jill had crawled towards her and curled herself in her lap as Megan's shoulders heaved painfully, and in a gesture too gentle for a child of four had wiped the blood away from the snapped cartilage of her nose. Meg had known then, in that instant, that there was more of her own mother in this little girl than there would ever be their father.

There's a soft clatter as Jill places her empty bowl in the sink, and Megan is pulled back to the present. She tells her sister to go and get dressed for school, and in the meantime she busies herself with tidying away the evidence of this morning's breakfast routine. She returns the box of cereal to the dry store cupboard and puts the butter and milk back in the small fridge beneath it, and squeezes past a protruding armchair to put the bread back in the breadbin. Their kitchen and living room area is small, a little crowded, and the two bedrooms and bathroom leading off from it are no larger. It bothers neither occupant. They have stayed in much smaller places, and the security of a warm bed in a private room still feels like a luxury to Meg.

Her little sister skips back into the main room and picks up her lunchbox. Megan pulls a black leather jacket on over her work shirt and groans slightly.

"It's okay," Jill says from the doorway, as if reading Meg's mind and knowing she dreads the hours she spends trapped behind the counter at the general store. "Your shift will be over before you know it!"

Megan moves towards the door to join her sister and tugs lightly on her ponytail. "You're a wise kid, Jilly-bean. Lets move."

* * *

A/N: I understand this chapter hasn't achieved much apart from a big load of exposition rather than progress the actual story, and the cut off might seem like it appears a bit earlier than it should. You'll need all that background information though, and this chapter was long enough frankly. The pace will pick up next chapter and we can finally get back to Megstiel interactions. Whaaaay.

I did say this story would be my first attempt at something that doesn't end in tears. Key word being 'attempt.' I'm terrible at happy endings but I might still try.

Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed/favourited/followed this story. You do beautiful things to my ego and I really appreciate it! Good morning/afternoon/night/whatever it is where you are. Bye!


	4. Chapter 4

**After The Fall**

**Chapter 4**

The comforting hum of the fan stops abruptly, and she hears the faint _click_ of an internal gear snapping out of place. The cool breeze kissing her skin is replaced, again, by the unbearable heat of the afternoon sun blinding her through the window.

Megan swears loudly, and for once is grateful that the store is devoid of customers to overhear her. Not that they'd care - the general population of Brahms have done much worse than utter a curse word in a moment of frustration. She's just glad her boss isn't around to chastise her.

_Stupid_, she calls her absent boss. _Stupid,_ she calls the burning sunlight. _Stupid,_ she calls the broken fan. Stupid, unreliable, turn-of-the-century relic, that she only keeps fixing again and again because her stupid, unreliable, turn-of-the-century relic of a boss is too cheap to install a decent air conditioning system. _Stupid._

She glares down at the fan sitting on the store counter in front of her, its' white meshed face staring up at her pitifully, its' propeller blades motionless in defeat. For one instant, in her eyes, it is the ultimate symbol of failure. It embodies poverty and stagnancy. It embodies everything she hates about this town and her own life.

_Stupid,_ she calls herself, and with a flick of her pale wrist, the fan crashes to the stained, tiled floor and breaks completely. She regrets it instantly, for the mess she now has to sweep up and for the blistering heat that she now has no chance of reprieve from. She reaches down behind the counter for the dustpan and brush and walks out on to the shop floor to clear it up, and empties the shattered frame and gears and screws into the dustbin.

It was almost worth it, purely for the satisfying sound of something solid breaking beyond repair.

Megan grabs a wobbly chair from the corner beside the back room door and drags it to the front of the store, where she angrily sits on it and rests her pale elbows on the surface of the counter. She wonders if it will always be like this. She wonders if she'll spend the rest of her tiny existence half-asleep behind shop and bar counters, the way she has spent the last six years of her life. Wonders if she'll be trying to fix broken things – old desk fans, ripped clothes, bones, her little sister – forever, over and over again, only for things to keep breaking. She wonders if one day, something bigger and more important than the fan will break irreparably and she'll be forced to sweep it up and throw it away altogether.

She wonders if this is how her mother felt, in a town too small for her aching smile, with a child too young to carry her – and not for the first time, Megan wonders if it is only this hostile town that drives everyone away, or if she has been the common denominator all along.

* * *

The clock on the wall tells him it is now nine-o-clock in the evening. The far superior accuracy of his own internal clock tells him that it is three minutes and 26 seconds slow, but he keeps glancing at it anyway.

He has sat here since noon, his arms resting and hands clasped upon the surface of the bar. He stood outside the bar for six hours before that, waiting for it to open, and he lay awake atop the sheets of his motel bed four hours before that, wondering if she would even be working at the bar today.

The blonde girl currently drying glasses behind the bar eyes him suspiciously. He can't really blame her. He has occupied this seat for nine hours and ordered a single beer - and only after her insistence that if he didn't order something, she'd have to throw him out. He had nursed the beer for around five hours now, only taking a sip whenever she glanced at him for an instant too long.

He hears the unmistakable rush of air of a door being pushed open, and the bar girl's hostile glare slides from his face to the door.

"Megan!" His head turns to look over his shoulder so quickly he's surprised he doesn't break Jimmy Novak's neck. Meg has walked in from the cool evening air, and he is struck again with a sense of awe that she is really here. She walks lazily towards the bar, dark hair falling in loose curls around her back, heels clicking against the wooden floor, and an eyebrow raised at the furious expression on her fellow bar girl's face. She hasn't noticed him yet. He doesn't mind.

"What's up, buttercup?" she drawls, smiling at the blonde girl now marching towards her.

"'What's up?' You were supposed to be here at eight!" Her voice is shrill, and it almost makes Castiel wince. It only seems to further amuse Megan. "My shift ended an hour ago - I tried calling you and you didn't even pick up!"

"You called me? Aw, sorry Jackie. I didn't know. My dog ate my phone, y'see." Her smirk is too satisfied for someone whose dog has ingested their cell phone, Castiel notices. Megan brushes past the other girl and hangs her leather jacket on a coat-rack fixed to the wall beside the bar.

"You don't have a dog!" the girl – Jackie – screeches. _Oh. Meg was being sardonic._

"And you don't have a boyfriend or a social life, so what's one more hour?" Megan turns to look at the blonde, her smile deceptively sweet. He feels a small smirk tug on the corners of his mouth, because if he had ever been unsure, that one action would have washed away any and all doubts. It is her. This girl is her, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It's in every facial expression and every cutting remark and every lazy drawl of her smoky voice.

Before Jackie can retort, Megan holds up a hand placatively. "Simmer. I'll do an extra hour for you tomorrow, okay? I won't stop at four and you can come in at five instead. I'm not totally thrilled about it but whatever."

Jackie glares at her, most likely realising it's the closest to a real apology Megan will ever give her, before grinding out a 'fine' in response and reaching for her coat. "If I get in shit for being an hour late tomorrow, I'm telling Jason it's your fault."

"Whatever, you're welcome," Megan shoots back, and is answered by the slamming of the door. He watches her as she pulls a band from the pocket of her jeans and ties her dark hair back in a tight ponytail, the sharp contours of her cheekbones and the slight smirk on her lips accentuated in the dim overhead light, and walks behind the bar to stand in front of him.

And then she looks at him. And then she blinks. Her slate grey eyes rest on his face, and again he sees the thorns scratching beneath the surface of her skin; the shadow of ghosts that have clung to her and followed her across entire worlds.

"You again?" Her eyebrow is raised, her expression unreadable, but there's a slight tremor in her voice that he can't quite place.

"Me again." He curls his fingers around the bottle of beer beside him and takes a drink, eyeing her over the neck of the bottle. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

"I thought you were out-of-towners. People never stay longer than they have to in this place." Her voice is lazy, almost playful, but there's a sharp note of resentment in her statement that he can't help but notice.

A slight, involuntary smile rests on a corner of his mouth. "You sound like you're trying to scare me away."

Her own mouth quirks into something like a smirk, and her eyes glitter in the dim light. "Nice boys like you tend to turn heads in a place like this. That's all."

He's not sure how to reply to that. To remind her that nice boys don't swallow purgatory and almost destroy humanity seems a bit much. To remind her that he's a bigger monster than she ever was lifetimes ago seems worse still. Instead he smiles slightly and asks for a whiskey.

"So where's your dad and your uncle?" she asks, almost disinterestedly, as she reaches for a tumbler and pours him a whiskey from the Jack Daniels tap.

"They went home," he replies, and feels a slight tug in Jimmy's chest at the memory of watching his brothers drive away.

She raises an incredulous eyebrow at him and places his drink on the surface of the bar. "And you stayed? What the hell for?"

He stares into the amber depths of his glass, and tries to find a way of being honest without actually being honest. "I made a mistake and I need to fix it." His ocean blue eyes shift to look at her, and some part of him wildly, vividly wishes that she would understand him.

Instead she scrutinises him, and clucks her tongue. Her expression is stony. "Ran out on your wife and kids, didja?"

"No!" The indignation rises in his throat before he can comprehend it and an amused expression dances across Megan's face. "No. Nothing like that." Although, he thinks, he did abandon Emmanuel's wife, and feels somewhat ashamed at how completely unashamed he feels.

"Good. There are enough bastard dads in the world." Her voice is playful again and there's a degree of satisfaction in her smile. He wonders if the notion of him married and with children had displeased her, but pushes the thought down before it can fully form. He has known her for decades, and she has known him for a day. It would be illogical for her to harbour anything more than an obligatory interest in him as a customer. She doesn't see him that way. And he doesn't want to dwell on why that makes him feel as if some insurmountable weight has settled in his chest.

He watches her as she works. Occasionally, an aged man with crows feet and a benign smile will approach the bar, and Megan will talk to him as she pours his drink, her smile genuine and not forced. Not threatened. Her laugh sounds lighter and there is no razor wire in her voice. She almost sounds happy.

"Who's that man?" he asks her, after the man has been served his third gin and he has rejoined a booth in the corner with men his own age.

"My grandpa." The fond smile from her previous conversation still rests on her red lips, and her eyes slide from the elderly man's table to Castiel's face. "Well, he's my sister's grandfather. But he's done a lot for me."

"Ah." He takes a drink of his beer, his whiskey finished ten minutes or so before. "I've never had a grandfather. Or grandparents in general."

Her face relaxes, the smile slipping away, and her eyebrows furrowing slightly. She looks at him almost thoughtfully, and he wonders what she sees when she looks at him like that, as she says, "I don't think I ever did, either."

"Think?"

"Well, I don't remember my mother's family, much less know anything about them. I'm not sure she had any." Her voice is steady but her eyes are distant. They're not looking into his anymore. "And my father… he never once mentioned anything about his family. Lets just say that I wouldn't be at all surprised if they'd disowned him and left him to rot." She shrugs, and before he can discern the expression on her face, she has crafted it into one of complete detachment, her arms folded beneath her chest and her eyes not quite meeting his. "So. Yeah. I don't think I have any." She turns her back on him and grabs a glass. He knows before she even reaches for a drink that she's going to pour herself a Southern Comfort and coke, and he can tell from the way her shoulders are tensed beneath her faded t-shirt that she is trying to distance herself from him now. As if the insight she provided him with is some sort of weapon he can use against her, and she's angry at herself for being so complacent.

"I'm sorry." She pauses, her calloused hand gripping her glass, and she turns to look at him again. Her expression is indiscernible, but the black thorns and smoke beneath her skin are writhing, and the violet eyes of the true form clawing just beneath the surface are wide.

She looks at him a little longer, as if trying to read him as clearly as he seems able to read her, before saying, "It's okay." And he knows she means it, at least for that moment.

* * *

"Green."

"Grass."

"Tree."

"Monkey."

"Human."

"Hell." Castiel looks at her pointedly. She raises an eyebrow at him in return. "Well, isn't that where we're all going? Humans aren't the nicest bunch." The air is cool, and she casts her eyes upwards to look for stars that aren't there. He wonders if the idea of damnation is just burned into the centre of her being, or if this life specifically has made her as despairing and lost as she was thirty years ago. It's a painful thought.

"They're certainly not the worst."

"They?"

"Us," he corrects, shaking his head at the careless slip of his tongue. "There are good and bad aspects in every species." They pass the last row of shops in town, and turn a corner into a small neighbourhood of run-down houses.

"I guess so." The echoing _click_ of her heels on the concrete is momentarily interrupted by distant shouts. Castiel stops and turns on the spot, his eyes scanning the vicinity for any immediate danger. Megan doesn't stop walking. Doesn't flinch. Instead, she laughs sardonically. "You're really not from around here, are you?"

He casts one last look behind them before catching up with her, and falls into step beside her. "I'm not really from anywhere."

"Well, aren't you just a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a trench coat." The distant shouts stop abruptly, and where before the silence had meant peace, it now fills the air around them with a terrible sense of unease. Neither comment on it.

They turn one last corner and Castiel finds himself in a cul-de-sac of small houses. Megan begins to slow her pace as the reach the third house; one-floor, detached, and with a tidy front porch. He couldn't help but notice that it seemed significantly more well-kept than the surrounding houses.

"That's me." He stops walking, and she turns to look at him, a crooked smile resting on the right corner of her mouth. "Just so you know, I can handle walking home myself. I'm a big girl." She winks at him, and the familiarity of it makes him ache. "But thanks, sugar."

"You're welcome," he replies honestly. Her smirk lessens, and becomes something like a careful smile. It almost looks foreign on her.

"So how long are you gonna stick around?" Her tone is nonchalant. Her eyebrow raised. The poster girl of feigned disinterest.

He can't help the self-satisfied smile that dances across his lips. "For a pretty long time."

Her lips twist into her crooked smile again, and her eyes glitter against the starless backdrop of the Wisconsin sky. "Then I'll see you around, Cas."

She doesn't understand it, and she can't rationalise it. She doesn't know what yet, or how, but she feels something in the world click back into place.

* * *

A/N: Fucking 5.17am, why do I do this to myself? Thank you for being a wonderful reader. Excuse me while I hibernate for five weeks.


	5. Chapter 5

**After the Fall**

**Chapter 5**

Angels do not sleep. This, he knows, because since his fall to earth he has so frequently and desperately tried. He has tried so many times in Dean's bunker; laid still on the bed in Sam's old room as he waited for sleep to overcome him, and never quite knew what he was expecting, having never experienced it. He has wondered if sleep is a sudden event; if he would close his eyes for just an instant and then open them hours later to sunlight streaming through the window, or if it is a slower and more peaceful process; if it would feel like some divine hand easing his soul from his vessel. He has wondered if sleep itself is even pleasant. Sometimes, he told himself that his inability to sleep was caused by the distraction of Dean's muffled snores and mumbling as they echoed throughout the halls of the bunker. It felt like an easier pill to swallow, rather than to dwell on the fact that he would never be able to escape the monotony and frustration of infinite consciousness.

Angels do not sleep, and they certainly do not dream. Castiel is therefore suitably confused when, after walking Megan home and falling into his bed, the darkness of his dilapidated motel room merges into nothingness.

Castiel's nothingness is white. It stretches on, and he cannot see an end to it. His initial alarm dulls, inexplicably, into something like curiosity. He walks experimentally in some blind direction, but he feels no pressure on the soles of Jimmy Novak's feet. There is no faint brush of hair falling into his eyes; the weight of his coat upon his back is gone. It occurs to him that he has no body.

A sound reaches him; a voice, but there is no speaker. It crashes around him and yet does not frighten him. It is soothing. It utters words, but he cannot hear them. There is a single speaker, he knows, and yet a multitude of tones as though thousands are speaking at once. The voice speaks in an infinite number of languages simultaneously. He hears English; he hears Latin and Arabic; Greek, Chinese, Sumerian; an endless rush of languages both dead and current. He focuses on the undercurrent of Enochian and clings to it, and the ringing in his ears stops abruptly before he can comprehend that it was even there.

_Can you hear me now?_

He can hear it clearly, though it seems neither masculine nor feminine. He opens his eyes, only now realising that he had closed them during his struggle to concentrate, and comes face to face with something solid. Directly in front of him are double doors, so close that were he in his vessel, the cool marble would brush against the skin of his nose. He stares up. The doors seem to stare down at him, an immeasurable number of feet tall and wide, with intricate silver carvings on the red marble of the panels. A strange sense of foreboding grips him, and so he takes several steps back.

He notices more solid objects in his peripheral vision, and turns to his left. Two more sets of double doors face him, the three forming an arch in the white expanse of nothingness. They differ from each other in colour alone.

The first door is made of ice blue marble, it's ornamental carvings obsidian, and the angel feels a strong wave of aversion towards it. Looking at it gives him the uneasy sensation of insects crawling beneath his skin; of being watched by unimaginable beasts; of being preyed upon. He is struck by the inexplicable feeling that he has been behind that door before, but he can't imagine why, when or how.

He focuses on the second double doors instead, and sees that the marble of this middle door is emerald green. The indecipherable markings shine golden, and Castiel feels a strange pull towards this particular door. Something about it feels familiar and safe, and reminds him of his childhood eons ago in what feels like someone else's life.

"My apologies. This state can be disorienting for the living."

The voice sounds more solid, less ethereal than before, and only now does he notice the form in the middle of the three sets of doors. He cannot fully comprehend it, much less describe it. It sits, humanoid, one arm resting upon a knee, the other leg stretched out before it. It has no face. The skin of it's body is like some mass of starlight, and yet it reminds him of swirling black holes in far-flung galaxies. It sparks and crackles before him.

"Who are you?" he asks, but he has no voice. The being before him understands him anyway, and appears to tilt it's head to observe him.

"I have many names, and many roles. You could call me Themis, or Maat. You could call me Shamash. You could call me Isis. Khaos, or Gaia even. Although, those names are only human constructs." It stands, and turns it's humanoid form towards him, and suddenly the white of it's teeth are visible against an otherwise featureless face. "You could also call me 'Existence.' 'The Truth.' I am balance. I am knowledge. I am all." It grins, feral. "And I am also you."

Castiel feels numb in the face of such infinity. "Are you God?"

The entity waves a hand dismissively. "No, no." It seems to survey him, and the angel feels uneasy. "I see you do not remember this place."

The simple statement jars something within him, and he nervously casts his gaze to the door directly behind the entity; the ice blue double doors and the sensation of malice that seems to roll from it in waves. Before he can ask, the thing speaks again, pointing it's left thumb over it's shoulder and towards the door.

"Yup. That's the one. You came through it, the last time your father sent you here. Yes," it confirms, before he can even form the question, "I know your father well. You could say we are distant relations."

The idea of something that exists outside of and on par with God is something Castiel has never before contemplated, and it leaves him with distinct feelings of both unease and awe.

"But I did not bring you here to discuss infinity." It walks past him to stand before the third and final door, and rests a hand on the cool red marble. "I have brought you here because I have grown weary of watching the same soul emerge from these doors, only to be sent back through them time and time again." It turns, and Castiel feels a set of eyes lock on his, despite this creature appearing to have none. "I am neutral in the face of all things, which means I am nothing if not fair. That soul always seems to be placed in the most terrible of circumstances, and I pity it."

Realisation dawns on him. "Meg?"

"You have called it Meg. You call it Megan now." It walks towards him, slowly, though not threateningly, and gestures towards the three sets of double doors with a shimmering arm. "The dead come here to be assessed. You see heaven and hell as physical places; the be all and end all. In reality, there are only states of existence, and the beings that occupy them." It is almost too much for Castiel to understand, and when the thing before him speaks again, the words are spoken patiently and slowly. "There is no end, Castiel. All things; human souls, angels, demons, even God and I, evolve infinitely and freely. There is no ultimate destination. There is only the journey."

"Why have I never been told of this before?" he asks. He feels strangely betrayed, as though everything he has ever known is false, and he feels a surge of resentment towards the omnipotent father he had once followed all manner of terrible orders in the name of.

"You have," it smiles almost tenderly, "You all have. But none of you remember. It was never required until now."

"Why am I an exception?"

The being casts it's head to look back at the red double doors again. "Because that soul has never been allowed to evolve, all because of prejudices held by your oldest brothers and sisters. It is unfair."

"My brothers and sisters? Do you mean higher-up angels?"

"Yes. Those who welcome departed souls to heaven are also those responsible for guiding new and reborn souls on your 'Earth.' The soul of a departed human ordinarily emerges from that door and is sent through one of the other two – I suppose you could say that one is a 'good' door and the other the 'bad' door - depending on that individual soul's actions in life-"

"Those other two doors lead to heaven and hell?" Castiel interrupts, trying desperately to keep up with this slew of new information.

"Not exactly," the The Truth replies patiently, "but you could refer to them as such, for arguments sake." It pauses, lets the angel absorb the information, before continuing it's original point. "However, for the sake of fairness, souls can be sent back through the third doors, back to human existence, and given more chances before I make an informed decision on where to send them next." It looks back at Castiel, it's tone serious. "Do you not find it strange for a soul to be given a second chance, a clean slate, only for it to be thrown into the most unfavourable and tragic of circumstances? It is pre-determination."

An unpleasant sensation strikes him, and quickly gives way to simmering anger. "Do you mean that the angel who oversaw her rebirth is deliberately trying to condemn her, because of her previous status as a demon?"

It grins. "You were always a favourite of mine, Castiel. Naturally quick." It's grin lessens, and the voice becomes serious once more. "She has to earn what you call heaven or hell, and any state after it, by her own actions. But I cannot bear to watch that soul suffer through the same endless cycle, time after time." The note of grief in this thing's voice strikes Castiel, and he is surprised by it's blatant remorse. "Reincarnation is a very common thing, but to be constantly forced into the same existence, without opportunity to evolve, is cruel beyond all reasoning."

"What can I do?" he asks. He knows already that whatever it is, he'll do it. If he has to fight angels and demons tooth and nail to save her, he will. He owes her that much, and he has failed her one too many times already.

The entity smiles, it's white teeth set in a grin against the starlight of it's skin. "Be the angel on her shoulder. There are forces that will try to sway and influence her for their own ends. Do not let them. The truth is, between you and I, that I've grown somewhat fond of that soul, and I really don't want to send her through the 'bad' door over there either."

There is something about this place that makes his mind spin. It's white expanse screams of nothingness, and yet Castiel has the distinct feeling that entire universes - that all of existence itself - is contained within this space, and that this being is it's sole keeper. The nothingness around him seems to hold every piece of trivial and vital information that he will never have access to; that he so desperately _wants _to have access to. He wants so badly to understand. This overwhelming confusion, coupled with the entity's ambiguous warning, begins to frustrate him. "What forces? Angels?"

"Not necessarily. You are not the only one who has noticed her, Castiel. Others will come. Others are already there. They will corrupt her if you don't counteract."

"Then what am I to do?" he almost shouts, his frustration mounting. He cannot think in this place. "Prevent her from sinning? Stop her from committing evil?"

"Yes, but only for actions that she does not commit through her own free will. If you influence her too much, she's still not earning her own journey, and therefore it's still unfair. You are only to even out the odds already stacked against her. Protect the inherent good in that soul, and let it thrive."

He's still frustrated, but feels somewhat more at ease. Being given orders is something he is used to, and although he has not necessarily followed them all before, he knows these are ones he has to. They are already the orders he set himself the moment he found her again, only to a more cosmic degree. "I understand."

The Truth gives him one last grin. "Thank you," it says sincerely, before the white surrounding him is replaced suddenly and violently by the dark ceiling of his motel room.

He is shaking, and with the sensation comes the realisation that he has regained his body. He becomes startlingly aware of the way his fists are clenched at his sides and the way his back feels tense, despite the soft comfort of his bed sheets.

For a few moments, he lies still and stares at the ceiling as the full shock of his encounter suddenly washes over him. That some omnipotent, eternal being exists outside of God, in a capacity he has never before been aware of let alone imagined possible, is hard to comprehend. And yet, somehow, it is easy for him to accept. He doesn't know it's relationship to his father, or how they co-exist or work together, and he feels that in all likelihood he will never know. How can he? He has never felt so humbled in decades; not since the leviathan he swallowed had devoured him in turn and punished him for his arrogance - had reminded him of how small, futile, and insignificant he truly was in the grand scheme of all things. He had been struck by the same feeling as he stood in that white space and realised that the truth of everything in existence was contained there, just beyond the reach of his fingertips, and yet not for him to understand. That realisation that he was tiny. That he was part of everything, and yet nothing all at once.

Castiel runs a hand through his dishevelled hair and outwardly groans as the weight of the being's words sinks in. Threats. Angels, demons, or any other manner of forces trying to push Meg back over the edge. If she were to regress and fall back into her old ways as a demon, she would never break free from the cycle The Truth had warned him of. Or, worse, she could be sent through that ice blue door next time and be condemned to some unknown state of existence, all because he failed to save her again.

Not for the first time, he asks himself why he so desperately wants to help her. And, yet again, the only reason he can provide for why he didn't leave this town with Sam and Dean two nights ago is that he simply couldn't. He could not leave her here, even before he learned of the very real danger she's in.

He remembers casting her one last glance before escaping with the brothers; the image of her squared shoulders and her dark hair cascading down her back, his knife poised in her hand, ready; the barricaded double doors before her straining with the pressure of countless hell hounds. He remembers her dressed in a blue nurse uniform, her feet resting in his lap as she read her magazine, and he remembers that she did not leave him then, no matter what her ulterior motive had been. He owes her, and it is all he needs to know. He will save her because she needs to be saved, but also because he needs to save her.

Angels do not sleep, and they do not dream. This, he knows, because he feels none of the comfort sleep is supposed to bring. Instead, he feels significantly less rested and much more alarmed than he did when he first laid down and closed his eyes.

* * *

A/N: I hope this chapter wasn't too vague, rambly, confusing or bullshitty for anyone. This is more of a general explanation chapter, so you now have all the jam packed action and witty Megisms to look forward to in future chapters. Thank you so much to everyone who has continued to review, favourite and follow this story, and I really hope this chapter hasn't put anyone off. See ya.


	6. Chapter 6

(A/N: If you haven't read chapter 4, PLEASE read that first. There was a problem with ff. net's email alerts that day, and I know of at least one instance where someone missed that chapter. It also explains the complaints of zero Megstiel interaction, despite that chapter being rife with it. If you missed it, go read it, or you're going to be really confused over how friendly they are in this chapter. Fankkssss.)

* * *

**After The Fall**

**Chapter 6**

The rain pounds against the concrete, every drop rippling in puddles beneath her feet. She stands for a moment to watch; to marvel at how something as small and insignificant as a drop of rain can impact so heavily upon it's environment.

She isn't overly thoughtful in nature - poetry tends to turn her off - but the rain is something she has always found a sort of solace in. The way it can wash away the dust and dirt of too many dry days and leave behind the cleanest, purest scent has always kind of amazed her.

It reminds her of her mother, who had loved it so fiercely that she used to take Megan walks with her whenever it happened to rain. She remembers her mother jumping in puddles with her, holding her tiny, soft hands in her larger, slightly calloused ones, and the feel of her own giggles escaping her throat at the sound of her mother's mirthful, beautiful laugh. Sometimes, her mother laughed so hard she cried. Her tears were indistinguishable against the rain streaking her face, but Megan knew she did because of the harsh intake of breath and the low, guttural sob that shook her shoulders, and then the way she would scoop Megan up and twirl her around, clinging to her. Her mother was so happy it made her cry. It was a nice thought.

Her eyes feel hot despite the chill on her skin, and abruptly she notices the way her hair is clinging to her face and the damp that threatens to soak her skin as it seeps through her jacket and clothes. She looks up instead, pulled back to the present by the shiver in her bones, and walks on. She has finished her shift at the store for today and her sister will be out of school soon, and Megan doesn't want to keep her waiting in the rain for too long.

She doesn't run into many locals as she half walks, half jogs from the general store to her sister's elementary school on the other, slightly nicer side of town. Not many venture out in this sort of weather anyway - most of the town's monsters are too busy drinking and fighting behind closed doors or in Brahms' endless supply of bars, Megan's sure. She passes Phil's Auto Shop and takes a short cut through the rundown play park, with it's peeling yellow paint and abandonment issues about as bad as her own, and walks past the vandalised bus stop. It's only when she turns a corner and unwittingly soaks her left foot in an unforeseen puddle that she sees him.

* * *

He had known already that this town was full of monsters, but he had thought them human. He had naively thought the only demons in Brahms were the abusive fathers safely tucked away behind closed doors, or the drunken men with bloodied knuckles who roamed the streets in the dark.

He had been wrong.

He takes in his surroundings, finding himself at a crossroads on the other side of town. It's raining heavily, and he reasons that the noticeable lack of pedestrians must be due to the unfavourable weather. The bitter taste of sulphur in the air around him had led him here, and yet he can't see any sign of life here, demon or otherwise.

Following his dream - the encounter with that eternal, omnipotent being – he has spent the last three days and nights endlessly searching the town, scouring for any potential danger, and only halting the search to briefly check in on Meg every few hours. She never sees him as she pours drinks behind the bar, or walks her sister to school, or tiredly stacks shelves at the general store. He doesn't need her to. To see that she is demon and angel free for the time being is enough, before he resolutely returns to his search. Every street, every store, every home. He has left no stone unturned.

So far, Castiel has found seventeen demons, and has smote none. Had there been fewer, he would not hesitate. But to kill one would be to draw the attention of the others, and it is a fight he is not willing to start with Meg so vulnerable and unknowingly trapped in the crossfire. The seventeen demons are 'civilians', blending in effortlessly with the rest of the population , fighting and creating chaos like perfect human monsters. They are unaware of his existence, and he has no way of knowing yet how much contact they have with Meg. He hopes against all odds that they don't know about her either, but knows it is unlikely. If he could see her old face merely by looking at her, he knows the unusually high concentration of demons in such a small town cannot be mere coincidence.

The rain pounds against the cotton of his trench coat as his nostrils burn with the distinct, acrid smell of sulphur. He stands, poised. Something is here, ahead of him. He's sure of it.

* * *

Castiel stands in the middle of the crossroads, two hundred or so yards away from her, his head tilted to the right. She hasn't seen him in three days, not since he had walked her home that night, and that strange, gnawing disappointment at his absence quiets all at once. He hasn't seen her, she realises, and for some reason she feels compelled to stay still, leaning against the corner of the crumbling building beside her. His tan trench coat is noticeably a few shades darker, heavy with rainwater, but he appears completely unaffected by the rain piercing the air like shrapnel around him. His hair, already dark in dry weather, looks inky black now. Despite being too far away to tell, she imagines it falling into his eyes and clinging to his damp skin; the rivulets of water sliding from the stubble of his jaw, slowly down his throat, trickling beneath the white collar of his suit. A sudden jolt of warmth snakes through her abdomen at the thought of it.

Something in the way he stands, motionless and yet poised, reminds her of a wolf straining it's ears and sniffing the air for fresh meat. In this moment, an inexplicable sense of power seems to roll from Castiel in waves, and he looks less like a man and more like some unstoppable force of nature. The notion tugs at something within her; a strange mix of instinctive fear and raw adrenaline, meshing together in an entirely pleasant and comfortable way. She thinks he must remind her of some long forgotten dream she once had and tucked away in the corners of her mind, because the image of him standing like this - strong, powerful, _dangerous_ - is so achingly familiar and yet not.

Then she hears the howl.

Megan cannot remember ever being fond of animals – something that had suited her just fine, as they always appeared to hold a similar aversion towards her. The way other people, her younger sister included, seem to melt at the sight of puppies and kittens always strikes her as silly. They're only animals. They are only a handful of species away from humans themselves, in her eyes, so why the fuss?

It's for this reason that, when she suddenly becomes aware of the dog standing in Castiel's line of vision, to the left side of the empty crossroads, the rush of affection towards it that flares in her is something entirely foreign to her. The glistening black fur covering it's huge body is matted by the rain, wet fur covering it's dark eyes, and she feels somehow akin to it. On the empty road it crouches, about the same distance from Castiel that she is, but he appears not to have noticed it. The man hasn't moved an inch, she realises, and suddenly she finds this whole thing alarmingly strange, because _can't he see it's gearing to pounce at him?_

The dog suddenly snarls, gallops, and she moves on instinct alone, her legs running towards him of their own accord. Castiel turns his head at the sound of her footsteps and finally sees her, a rare expression of surprise gracing his face, followed by a touch of wariness.

"What the hell are you doing?" she shouts, because he still hasn't moved, tilting his head slightly as if surveying her, as though there is no bloodthirsty canine hurtling towards him at an alarming rate, spit flying from it's snapping jaws. The most feral, unimaginable roar escapes from it's throat, and it is only then that Castiel whirls around to face the source of the noise and steps back uncertainly. She is too preoccupied to notice that his eyes do not focus on it.

It is fast, but in her adrenaline so is Megan. The beast is now directly in front of her as her legs come to a stop all on their own, and she falls between it and the man behind her; her soaked body crouched, her face level with it's bared teeth and dark, almost black eyes. The dog has stopped in it's tracks.

She did not think. She had only moved. She had felt none of the fear for herself in this situation as she had for him. Megan knew, somehow, that this dog would have torn Castiel apart, but wouldn't her. She doesn't know where that instinct arises from, and it doesn't matter.

"Meg, move!" Castiel shouts, his voice like gravel over broken glass, and his hands grasp around her arms to move her out of the way. She resists.

"It's okay," she says, and she sounds so sure that she surprises even herself. "It's not going to do anything."

"You don't know that!" Castiel shouts and moves his hands to her shoulders, gripping her hard enough to bruise in his desperate attempt to pull her from the ground and away from the danger facing them. She resists still, knees remaining firmly on the soaked ground beneath them, and suddenly he feels her damp, ice-cold hand wrap around his wrist. Her face still stares ahead, hidden from him, and he stares down at the back of her dark, rain soaked head. Something in the way she crushes her fingers against his skin, her hold on him as tight and bruising as his own grip on her, stops him. This hellhound before them that he cannot see - that she somehow still can, even after all this time and without her memories - doesn't scare her, and that has to count for something. Her confidence, even during this bizarre situation, stills his panic. He trusts her. He always had – or rather, had always trusted her instincts. He lets go of her shoulders, still wary, and before he has the chance to pull away completely and resent the fact that his fingers will leave bruises on her skin, she holds him in place. Her tight grip on his wrist loosens, but she doesn't let go.

The dog, still crouched on all fours, stares back at her, the hostile growl dying in it's throat and the snarl of it's mouth shrinking. It's massive ears lift, and it inches it's face closer to Megan's, nose sniffing the air between them experimentally. Slowly, she lifts her other arm to stroke behind it's ear, and the dog lets out a short bark before it nuzzles into the comfort of her hand, tail wagging behind it as it straightens into a sitting position. The unfathomable rush of affection returns with a vengeance, and Megan almost laughs.

"Good boy." She continues to pet the dog, and it moves closer, nuzzling her head with it's own. "You're all bark. No bite."

Castiel stares as Meg's hand seems to stroke thin air. He knows an infinite number of languages both dead and current, and a vocabulary beyond almost any other being's comprehension - but he cannot find words that suitably describe how bizarre this situation is. He stands, one wrist still snared in Meg's cold fingers, and does not know what to do. Afraid, irrationally, that if he were to remove himself from the hold she has on him, both literal and metaphorical, something will break. That if he moves now, this will end. Meg will know. She will know he cannot see this dog. She will know something is wrong with the world and that he has been lying to her, all this time, out of some selfish desire to right a wrong he couldn't prevent thirty years ago. Feeling foolish, he finds his voice.

"Meg…"

"Megan," she corrects. It's an automatic response every time he calls her that. She can't help it. Something in the way that name seems to catch in his throat every time he says it always jars something in her. It's only a word, one syllable, but it feels so heavy. She doesn't understand why it makes her ache; why it makes her think of fire and smoke, of vengeance and the bitter taste of wasted chances on her tongue. It's frustrating. She pushes the thought aside and turns her head to look up at Castiel behind her shoulder, the dog whining at her diverted attention. "What?"

He quickly analyses her expression. One eyebrow raised expectantly, a teasing smile resting on a corner of her mouth. She looks almost completely untroubled, and _she doesn't know_, he realises. It hasn't occurred to her that he can't see the hellhound before them. She doesn't realise that only she can, and doesn't realise why. Because what human would or could comprehend this situation?

"Uh," he begins clumsily, trying to find any words that won't betray his shock or sound foolish. "Good job."

She snorts derisively, and her short, sardonic chuckle sends a jolt of nostalgia down his spine. "All that drama for a big pet. Jesus Cas, do you cause this much trouble everywhere you go?"

"I'm just…not a dog person," he replies indignantly.

Megan scoffs at the almost defensive expression on his face, before turning her head back to the dog before her. Deep, almost completely black eyes stare back at her, and she ruffles the black fur of it's head before she shifts to stand up. The dog whines when she withdraws, and she feels a pang of regret. "I didn't think I was much of a dog person, either."

She only notices the steady, almost familiar warmth of Castiel's skin when his wrist drops from her fingers and her hands are left cold again. She hadn't noticed until now, and the sudden absence of that odd sense of comfort now seems so glaring.

The dog stares up at her, a soft whine escaping it's throat, and she finds herself wanting nothing more than to just reach out and comfort it. Instead, she resists. "Go home, boy. Your owner must be missing you." The dog stands on all fours, easily reaching Megan's waist, and nudges against her affectionately as it turns away. There's something almost mournful about the way it's giant paws pad along the wet concrete, it's massive tail dragging behind it. Megan is struck by a strange rush of longing, while the wistful, irrational part of her idly wonders if the dog had understood her somehow. She watches it a little longer as it retreats the way it came and turns the corner, and finds herself wishing she hadn't sent it away.

"Are you alright?" Castiel asks, and she turns to look at him. She almost looks sad, and when she gestures for him to walk with her, he does.

"Yeah. I don't know, it's weird. I don't really like animals. Call me heartless, I just never really got the big deal." The ever-present drawl of her voice loses it's smoke, and to Castiel, she sounds so strangely vulnerable. "But I felt like that was my dog or something. Y'know? Like when you're a little kid and you lose your favourite toy, then find it later when you almost gave up and thought you'd have to steal a new toy from some other kid." He doesn't actually know what that's like, personally, but he understands, so he nods reassuringly. "It sounds stupid. I just… I felt like it was mine."

It probably was, Castiel reasons. Probably still is. If anyone could tame a hellhound and make it love her, he thinks it would have been Meg.

The rain lessens somewhat as they walk. He doesn't know where they're going, but he's following her anyway.

"So what were you doing out in this shitty weather?" she asks, her tone light and lilting again, her eyebrow raised as she turns to look up at him as he walks beside her.

"I was walking," he says quickly, and she raises both eyebrows at him.

"Walking."

He tilts his head to meet her accusatory stare. "Yes," he replies. "Walking."

"Yeah," she drawls, smirk hidden behind her hair as she turns her attention back to the sidewalk. "Walking. Sure. You were quite the pedestrian back there, standing in the middle of the road, totally oblivious to your surroundings."

He shoots her a sideways glance, and decides to tell her a half-truth. "I was looking for something."

"What? A big, angry dog?" He doesn't say anything and she presses on. "Really, though. What are you doing in this shit-hole? There's nothing here. No-one ever stays."

She hadn't quite said it, but he'd heard it anyway. No-one ever stays. _Everyone leaves._

"Do you really hate being here so much?" he asks her, deflecting her question with his own, and hoping she doesn't catch it.

"Who wouldn't?" she replies. They reach the end of the street and turn a corner, and he sees they're getting further and further away from the side of town where Meg lives. The rain has become a light drizzle, the skies have cleared, and a few pedestrians have ventured outside.

"If you hate it so much, why have you never left?"

Megan stays silent for a few moments, and as they cross another street, he thinks that maybe he shouldn't have said anything. Castiel contemplates changing the subject, asking where they're going, when she speaks again.

"I was going to, once." He tilts his head to his left to look down to her, but her head is turned ahead, facing away. "I had it all figured out, actually. I was going to leave at sixteen. Find a crap job in another city, and wait for the day a big-shot producer noticed me and offered me a lead role in his new Holywood movie. Y'know. That kinda thing." More and more pedestrians appear; mostly women, Castiel notices, their voices carrying on the wind as they chat to each other, making their way to the yellow building he can see tucked away at the end of the street and round another corner. A school, he thinks, maybe.

"My mother…" she pauses, as if trying to find the right word, "…died. When I was young. And I lived my whole life clinging to that idea of getting out. It was the only thing that kept me going, and the saddest thing was that I knew, deep down, it wasn't ever going to play out like that." And then she tilts her head to glance up at him, and a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth when she says, "But then my sister was born."

She has spoken to him about her sister before, but very briefly, and only in passing. But he had seen it then, three days previously, and he could see it now. Meg truly, genuinely, adored her sister.

"You stayed here for your sister?"

"I couldn't leave her here. I couldn't leave her in that house." She turns her face away again, and the razor wire creeps back into her voice, bitterness clinging to her words. "Even if her mother had stayed, and hadn't run off and abandoned her."

They round the corner at the end of the street, and the yellow school building faces them. It's a little dilapidated, he thinks, but it's certainly better kept than most of the other buildings he's seen in Brahms. In fact, this side of town seems somewhat more pleasant overall. The gates are open; children walking out to meet their mothers, laughing, talking.

"We're picking your sister up from school?" he asks as they walk towards the building, their steps slowing.

"Very astute, Mr. Holmes," she winks at him, before her grin loosens. She looks a little unsure, and she stops walking. He stops beside her. "Unless, y'know, you'd rather not. Might be a bit weird for you, this only being our third conversation, ever. If you want to head back, it's cool. I can pick Jill up myself."

He can only remember Meg ever being this flustered once before - after he had pressed her against a wall and kissed her thoroughly, over thirty years ago. She had looked so unsure of herself then, and she looked the same now. Eyes averted, arms crossed beneath her chest. Seeing Meg of all people lost for words was satisfying and almost endearing, all at once.

Castiel can read her like a book. He had learned, over their short time together all those decades ago, and even though she may be a different person now, her essential nature hasn't changed. Right now, she's worrying that she's pushed him into a part of her life that she usually keeps so heavily guarded, and she's feeling a little foolish for it - that he probably doesn't want to be in it anyway, and that she's being careless.

He almost smirks, and settles on a small smile. "It's alright," he says. "I'm staying."

She tilts her dark head to look up at him, and shoots him a crooked smile before she starts walking again, towards the old elementary school and the blonde little girl she can spot in a sea of kids and parents. "Whatever. Oh, and don't think I didn't notice your little subject change back there."

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replies smoothly, and he can tell she's raising an eyebrow without even looking.

"I told you some of my sob story. It's your turn later. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but you're going to tell me, eventually."

"It's a long story."

"That's okay," she replies lazily, waving to a blonde girl who smiles and runs towards them. "I've got time."

* * *

(A/N: Longer chapter. Yay. I don't know how I feel about that whole hell hound scene followed by a heart to heart, but it was time to move this story the hell along. Reviews are always welcome, and motivate me to keep writing this story since I have a really short attention span. Thanks for reading! Bye bye.)


	7. Chapter 7

**After The Fall**

Chapter 7

* * *

"Well, shit." Dean's voice sounds like sandpaper over the crackling telephone line of Castiel's motel room. There's a short silence between them before Dean speaks again, his tone incredulous. "It all seems a little over the top for one little ex-demon, don't 'cha think?"

Castiel exhales harshly, elbows resting on his knees and one hand pushing his hair back from his eyes tiredly. "Yes. I do. But it's all I have to go on for the time being." His voice feels coarse and rough after painstakingly explaining his situation to Dean, after finally reaching him on his fourth cell phone number forty minutes ago.

"If you ask me, this 'Knowledge' guy or whatever you want to call him sounds shady. Never heard of anything like him."

"That doesn't necessarily make his information invalid."

"I guess not, Cas, but how d'you know he's not some kinda demon? Or that this isn't some sort of trap for you?"

Castiel frowns. "For what purpose? There is no war anymore," he replies, and he hopes Dean doesn't hear the way the resentment catches in his throat when he says, "I'm of no value anymore."

"So why this big fanfare over an ex-demon who's lost her memories?" Dean asks, his voice betraying his impatience. "At least if they were after you there'd be some sense in it. You're still an angel, Cas – the next Big Bad could just come after you and try to use you. What would they do with Meg? Ask her to pour vodkas at their next end-of-the-world party?"

"I understand what you're saying," Castiel replies tiredly, "But she saw the hellhound, Dean. Only the hellhound's intended target should be able to see it - and I couldn't. That means it wasn't there for me. I was not the mark. I was just something it came across when it was following it's real target."

"Meg? You think it was looking for her all along?"

"I think it was _her_ hellhound. It would explain why she could see it and why she was able to prevent it from attacking me."

"Or maybe someone remembers a little more than she's letting on." The suspicion that creeps into his Dean's voice feels like a personal betrayal and Castiel tries not to feel indignant. "How do you know she hasn't regained her demon mojo and isn't running around painting the town red right under your nose?"

Castiel involuntarily rolls his eyes, and idly notes to himself what a human gesture it is. "I'm not a fool, Dean. Although it's crossed my mind that she may be able to access a limited amount of her old power, it's very unlikely. And if she were slaughtering people, I would surely know."

"Don't get touchy, Cas. I'm trying to help you here." Dean's voice sounds tired, and with a sudden jolt of dread, Castiel remembers that Dean is growing old. He hadn't noticed it too much over the last decades they had spent hunting together, but now, with Dean thousands of miles away, he can hear it in his voice. His best friend is aging, growing old alone, while he will probably stay in this timeless vessel for eternity. It suddenly seems so unjust, so terribly unfair, that Castiel is momentarily left speechless. It dawns on him that Dean will not live forever, nor Sam, and the weight settles in his chest and refuses to lessen.

"Cas? You there?" Dean asks impatiently, and Castiel tries to push back all thoughts of the inevitable for the moment.

"I'm here," he says, and his voice feels so heavy suddenly. "I know. You're always trying to help me. I'm sorry, Dean."

There's a pause before Dean replies. "It's fine. I just want you to look at this properly, okay? I just want you to watch your back."

"I understand, Dean. But Meg is not the threat, she's the victim. She has lost her memories and she is helpless, in a town full of demons who most likely want something from her."

He hears Dean exhale harshly over the phone, and imagines Dean massaging his temples the way he always did when he concentrated on a problem. "You've got to be missing something. Why would angels care about pushing her back on the naughty step? I know you angels are dicks sometimes, but surely if her slate's been wiped clean, they can't interfere? Why would they go to all this trouble to punish this one soul anyway? Meg never really did much to them; there's no real motivation for vengeance there."

"I agree," Castiel replies, pushing himself to his feet and pacing the mottled orange carpet of his motel room. "If angels are involved, it must be for some other purpose."

"So what about these demons? Why would they want to push her into doing bad shit? It's not like they even know about this 'Knowledge' guy or the place with the doors, right?"

"My understanding is that only a select few know of its existence. Not a general demographic. It was strongly inferred that only some higher level angels know of it, and that even then their knowledge of it is very limited. The being implied that it doesn't let anyone remember their visits. I was an exception because it needs me to help Meg – another reason I don't believe it would allow demons the advantage of knowing about the doors."

"Okay. So, if angels are involved, it's for some other big bad reason. Great. The demons don't know about the doors, so that means they're probably not after Meg for revenge, or the eternal torture of her soul, or anything like that. They must want something else from her."

"I think," Castiel says slowly, "that they may be trying to return her to her demon form. Though at this point, I don't know why."

"Maybe they miss her gentle smile and pleasant way of dealing with people," Dean says seriously, and Castiel almost laughs. The weight of the situation still feels heavy on his shoulders, but hearing Dean's voice and his reliable sarcasm makes the whole thing feel somehow more bearable. He feels lighter already; felt lighter the instant Dean's voice answered him on the other end of the line.

"How are you, Dean?" he asks, because he needs to _know_. It's only been four days, but Dean sounds tired in a way Castiel has never heard before.

"I'm good, Cas," Dean replies, sounding slightly puzzled by the abrupt change in conversation. "What, do you miss me already?"

"Yes," he tells Dean honestly. "I do miss you. You usually make me feel less alone in impossible situations."

Dean chuckles on the other end of the line. "You're not so alone, Cas. It sounds like you and Meg 3.0 are on pretty good terms already. You'll be settling down soon, white picket fence and everything."

"I don't think so, Dean. But yes, we're on good terms, all things considered. It will make protecting her much easier."

Dean lets out a short bark of laughter. "Don't pretend this is all about a job, Cas. You're doing this for you." Castiel doesn't really know how to respond to that, and he's grateful when Dean speaks again. "Y'know I'm just a car ride and a full tank of gas away at any given time. If things start getting scary, give me a call, okay?"

"I will," he promises, and somehow even this impossible, insurmountable situation feels easier to deal with, all because Dean is still his best friend and is still there to help him when he needs him. "Thank you," he says, and as they say their goodbyes and end the call, he hopes Dean understands just how grateful he really is.

* * *

"Can we watch this one?" Jill asks, and Megan turns from the stove to see her sister curled on the lone couch in the middle of the room, legs folded beneath her skinny frame, holding up an old blu-ray case.

"We watch that one all the time, Jill. Pick something else. See what's on TV."

"Yeah, okay." She picks up the remote control and flicks through the channels instead, and Megan turns back to the pot of chilli simmering on the stove. She had tried to catch an hour of sleep after she and Castiel had picked Megan up from school, and Cas had gone off to do... whatever it is Castiel does when she's not around. Her shift at the store earlier had tired her out, but she had been unable to really sleep. Instead she'd lain in bed, tossed and turned, and had fallen into some state between sleeping and waking. Flashes of that dream she so often has are gradually returning to her, and not for the first time, she wonders what those orange eyes and those black bars mean.

She had mentioned it once, to Jill, that she often had dreams of a man in a cage, asking her to let him out. Jill had looked at her, expression indiscernible, and softly suggested, 'Maybe it's dad.' Megan knows better. Their father could never be that thing that speaks so gently and offers her such unending comfort. Their father could never be sad in the way those orange eyes are. He didn't have the capacity for anything but anger.

She dishes the chilli into two bowls and grabs a bag of nachos, and heads towards the couch to sit beside her sister. Jill is still flicking through channels as she takes one of the bowls from Megan and rests it on her knee.

"Is Castiel your boyfriend?" Jill asks suddenly, and Megan nearly chokes on her food.

"What?"

"Is Castiel your boyfriend?" Jill repeats, eyes still fixed on the television as she clicks the buttons on the remote control.

"No," Megan replies firmly, eyebrow quirked in amusement. "No. I don't do boyfriends."

"I think he is," Jill says firmly, and turns to look at Megan pointedly. "And you should have a boyfriend. Chloe's mom has a boyfriend, and Castiel is much better than him."

"That so?" Megan asks, smirk widening. "Maybe _you_ just like Castiel and you're the one who wants him around."

Jill's pale skin flushes scarlet and she looks back towards the TV, avoiding Megan's glittering eyes. "No I don't," she says indignantly, and Megan is reminded that Jill really is just a kid, no matter how mature and grown up she seems most of the time. "I just think he should be your boyfriend."

"And why's that, Jilly-bean? Go on. Enlighten me."

Jill pauses, her embarrassment forgotten, and she looks thoughtful. "Because he's good," she says finally, "the way my teacher Mrs Milton is good."

"Oh?" Megan asks, her interest piqued. "What do you mean 'good'?"

"He just is," Jill replies casually, as if it's the most obvious thing. "He's just good; he's not like other people. You can tell."

"What am I then?" Megan asks. "Aren't I good as well?"

Jill smiles fondly, her eyes still cast to the flickering channels in front of her. "No, you're not good. Not really. But you're not like other people, either. And you're mine, so it doesn't matter anyway."

Megan is thoroughly amused. "You're a really weird kid, y'know?"

"So you always say." They eat their food in silence for a while, until Megan speaks again.

"You're going all the way through the old ager channels. Is that how bad it's getting?"

"There's really nothing on," Jill replies, and just as Megan's eyes focus on an old black and white movie – _'-rence! Help me Cla-'_ – Jill has flicked through the channel and moved on to another.

"Go back!" Megan says suddenly, surprising even herself with the urgency in her voice. Jill gives her a strange look, but returns to the previous channel anyway.

A man in a coat stands leaning over a bridge, the railings thick with snow, his hands clenched together, praying.

"_Get me back! Get me back, I don't care what happens to me! Get me back to my wife and kids! Help me Clarence, please!" _

There's a sharp ache in her chest, and it's so debilitating that suddenly it hurts to breathe.

_Why are you so sweet on me Clarence?_ She hears, in a voice too soft, too happy, to be the shouts of the man on the screen.

"_Please! I wanna live again. I wanna live again-"_

_-I don't know,_ comes the reply, in a voice so achingly familiar and yet not_, _and she's holding cool glass in one hand and her wrist hurts and there's someone sitting across from her and_ And I still don't know who Clarence is-_

"_-Please, God, let me live again," _the television sobs, and an inexplicable sense of grief rips through her. This sense of loss is paralysing. There is a hole in the world and she can't see it, but she knows suddenly that she's been walking perilously on the precipice of it her entire life, oblivious. Something is wrong, so wrong that she can't understand why she's never seen it before, and yet she still doesn't know what it is.

"Megan?" Over the roaring in her ears, she hears Jill's voice, and turns to look at her. Jill's deep brown eyes are wide in her young face, her light eyebrows furrowed, and her eyes are shining with unshed tears. "Megan, what is it?" Megan blinks, and realises her eyes are hot and stinging, and she can taste salt on her tongue and the corners of her mouth. Her cheeks are wet with tears. "Megan, what's wrong?"

Jill can't see her cry. Jill has never seen her cry. So she laughs, short and sharp, and wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater.

"I saw this years ago," she says, "before you were born. My mom used to like it." It felt somehow easier to lie, than to try to explain to her ten-year-old sister that she was having some sort of emotional breakdown for no apparent reason.

Jill looks at her, and opens her mouth to speak. The words don't come out, but the expression on her sister's face is so profoundly sad that Megan feels like she might begin crying again. She pushes back the sobs before they can form in her throat.

"What is it, Jilly-bean?"

Jill's face is hesitant, and her voice is small. "Do you miss your mom?"

They've never really had this conversation before. Megan explained the basics to Jill when she was younger – that they shared the same father, but had different mothers – but they've never done this before. They've never talked about mothers before. It's a subject Megan has always hoped would never rear its head, but one she knows Jill has a right to talk about. One day Jill will need to talk about it, and Megan decides in this moment that it might as well be today. The issue is staring them in the face now and they can't look away.

"Yes," Megan breathes, "I miss her. I miss her every day."

"What was she like?" Jill asks. Her voice has lost it's hesitance, and now she just looks like any normal, curious little kid.

"She was warm," Megan says, and she's surprised by how much better it feels to be talking about her, rather than leaving her behind in the back of her head. "And bright. She had the biggest smile, and her hair was dark, like mine. She was always making up little songs." She feels the corners of her mouth twitch upwards, and it feels so good to be able to smile. Jill smiles in response, listening. "She used to pick me up from school, and if it was raining, we'd go on long walks and jump in all the puddles – like you and I do, sometimes. She loved the rain. She loved it so much, and it made her so happy-" _so happy she cried. _Megan stops.

"What happened?" Jill asks slowly, her smile diminished. Megan doesn't know how to go on.

"She was always so happy," she replies. "And I loved her so much. She was the centre of the world, and you felt so happy just being near her. She was like the sun. I see a lot of her in you, y'know, even though you never knew each other." Her eyes begin to sting and she pushes the tears back through sheer force of will. "But I think, now, maybe she felt like she didn't belong. She wanted to go away."

"Why?" Jill whispers, and Megan shakes her head.

"I don't know, Jill," she answers, "but I think she's in a happier place now."

Jill nods, and Megan wonders if she really understands, before she speaks again and Megan is astounded, as usual, by the level of intelligence and empathy her sister possesses for her age.

Jill smiles at her softly. "I don't think she would have left you unless she knew you were going to be okay here." It's said with such conviction that Megan almost believes it.

"Do you ever miss your mom, Jill?" she asks. "You can tell me. It's okay to miss her."

"No," Jill says, and Megan knows she means it. "I don't remember her. I can't miss her." Something about that breaks Megan's heart.

"Don't you feel... sad about her? It's okay if you do," Megan says, but Jill looks at her with such honesty that Megan is left speechless.

"I don't feel anything about her. She's just some woman who popped me out, then ran away," Jill says, with the sort of honesty that only a child can deliver. There is no bitterness, no resentment in her voice when she says, "I've never missed her, because I never wanted her either. The only person I ever needed was you." And then, like the gentle sort of child she's always been, she reaches over, kisses Megan on the forehead, and settles back in her space to watch the movie.

Megan sits, stunned, and feels a sudden rush of gratitude for the little girl on the other side of the couch. There really is more of her own mother in this child than there could ever be their father, she thinks, and she could cry all over again from the knowledge that she's doing at least something right. Her sister is happy, truly happy, and it's all been worth it. Working behind that bar, letting drunken men breathe down her neck and leer at her; standing behind the store counter and letting her boss yell at her; running away from that house with a tiny, blonde girl in her arms, feeling lost and terrified and with nowhere to go – it has all lead to this moment. That fear she's always secretly harboured, that she would never be enough for Jill, dissipates all at once.

"Let's rewind it," Jill says, oblivious to the tears streaming down Megan's cheeks, "and we can watch it from the start."

"Okay," Megan replies, and the grief that had hit her so suddenly earlier lessens. She knows something is still wrong, and that that invisible hole in the world still exists, but it doesn't matter. She's sitting beside her little sister, and they're both here, together, safe, _alive_, and it feels so strangely fleeting that she wants to cling to it until it's all she has left.

* * *

Castiel doesn't see Meg again until the next day. After thoroughly searching the town again for any demons he hadn't detected yet, and satisfied that there appeared to be no immediate danger, he finds himself seated on a bar stool in Annie's Bar. He rests his elbows on the scarred oak surface and asks Meg for a bottle of beer, if only to give the impression that he really is here for a drink, and isn't just following her around like some sort of predator. She places it in front of him and gives him her best eyebrow quirk.

"I'm bored," she drawls, and the familiar sound of it makes him smile involuntarily. The bar is near empty at four in the afternoon, and she's busied herself with all the menial jobs she can possibly think of. She grabs herself a bottle of beer and walks around the bar to pull up a seat beside him. "Tell me a story."

He turns his head to his left to look at her. She looks tired. The skin beneath her slate grey eyes is only slightly purple, but set against her pale skin, it looks as though she hasn't slept in days. Megan leans forward to rest her upper body on the surface of the bar, resting her head in her folded arms, and looks back up at him. She works herself ragged, he knows, between the bar and the general store, and if she can sit here beside him and take some time to rest, he'll feel better for it.

He doesn't really know many stories. There's only one he remembers well; one that Sam used to read to his daughter when she was a child. Her copper eyes would light up as Sam read to her, squealing in delight when he imitated silly voices, and pulling her blanket over her face at the scarier parts. Whenever he felt particularly lost, he would watch them from the corner, invisible to them both, and marvel at the way they interacted with each other. It seemed so strange, that this boy who had started and stopped the apocalypse, who had singlehandedly locked the devil in a cage, and had fought the battle of free will versus destiny and actually won, now had a child of his own, and that she would never know of everything her father, her uncle, and himself had done in the world. It occurs to him suddenly that she must be Megan's age by now, and that he had never had the chance to watch her grow up as her father and uncle have. He feels somewhat saddened by it.

But Meg's looking up at him expectantly, and he clears his throat.

"Once upon a time," he begins, intent on retelling the story word for word as Sam had, "There once lived a girl, whom everyone called 'Little Red Ri-"

" 'Little Red Riding Hood'?" Megan interrupts, her eyes glittering with sardonic amusement. "I don't like fairytales, sugar. Tell me something new."

"I don't really know any other stories," he replies, feeling somewhat put out.

"Make something up," she orders, and stares at him defiantly until an idea comes to him and he clears his throat.

"Fine. Once upon a time – don't look at me like that," he says sternly, "it's not a fairytale." She raises her eyebrow and her smirk lessens into something like a genuine smile, and he carries on. "Once upon a time, there was..." he hesitates, before finding a suitable word, "...a soldier. He was raised in the army, with the rest of his family, and it was all he had ever known. One day, when he was still young, his father – the commander – ordered that they were to go to war with another army on the other side of the world. Because he was young, and naive, he did as he was told, and fought alongside his brothers and sisters against the enemy army. They were all told that, if they didn't, then the other army would take over the world, and life as they knew it would be no more."

Meg's staring up at him, listening intently, and he wonders just how far he can push this.

"He killed many enemy soldiers in the following days, all in the name of his father. But on the fourth and last day, he found himself face to face with another soldier, both with their weapons raised, and locked in a stalemate. She was his enemy, but he realised suddenly that he was her enemy too. Just as he had been conditioned by his family to save the world, she had been conditioned by hers to destroy it. Simply by existing, she planted a tiny seed of doubt in his mind. In the end, he didn't kill her. Nobody won that war. The world didn't end, but it was damaged irrevocably."

He stops, unsure how to continue, but Meg urges him on. "Then what?" she asks, her voice devoid of snark and her expression indiscernible. She almost reminds him of Sam's daughter, waiting for the next part of her bedtime story.

"Years later, he met her on the battlefield again. Her previous commander – her father – had been defeated, and a new one had risen to take his place. But she wasn't loyal to the new commander. He wasn't her family, and he was only using her army for his own ends. She rebelled, alone, and soon after that, the soldier rebelled from his own army. It turns out that his army had only been using him, too. She had reached him, somehow, and he realised that the world wasn't as black and white as he had been taught it was."

The thorns and smoke are writhing beneath Meg's skin, and those violet eyes stare at him through Megan's own slate grey. "I think I've heard this story, before," she says, her expression far away, as though trying to catch up with some long forgotten dream. "What happens next?"

He mirrors her, leaning his head on his own arms on the surface of the bar, left cheek upturned to look at her. "They made their own army. In the end, it wasn't so much about saving or ending the world. It was about choice. It was about free will versus destiny. The other armies were defeated, and the world was left alone, to be whatever humanity wanted it to be."

Meg's looking at him intently, and he sees something shift beneath her human face. The demon writhing beneath her skin looks torn and unsure. Its violet eyes are set wide and glittering against the black smoke and thorns of its body, and it begins to claw wildly beneath Megan's skin.

"Do they die?" she asks. The word catches in her throat and Castiel doesn't want to do this anymore. He's being selfish in wanting her to remember. He's so desperate in wanting her, all of her, to come back whole that he has let himself continue, rambling on with the story of their lives, without allowing himself to truly consider the consequences. If she remembers, it could cost everything. She could go insane. She could put herself in danger. She could die because of him, all over again.

"Castiel?" she prompts, and that selfish part of him wins. He tells himself it's because it's different now, because he can save her this time. He pretends that nothing bad will happen if she remembers, because he's here now, and that if she goes insane then he'll take her insanity away. If she puts herself in danger, he'll pull her out of it, and if she dies then he'll find some way to bring her back. If he were honest, though, he knows he's telling her all of this because he misses the way she used to call him Clarence.

"She died," he says. He almost can't say it. It's still hard, even after all this time, to say it aloud. She's right in front of him, so close that their elbows touch, and he still misses her. "She saved him, over and over again, and died so that he could keep fighting. And because of her, he won. She won, too. It was all for free will, and in the end, she found her own cause to fight and die for."

Meg looks at him, her grey eyes locked on his own ocean blue, and asks, "Did he love her?"

The question takes him aback, and all he can do is stare at her. The expression on her face is so profound, and her eyes so inexplicably sad, that he's momentarily left speechless. "He probably did," he says finally.

She smiles at that; not her smirk, or her sardonic smile, or that crooked, playful grin she often wears. It's small, barely noticeable, but it's there and real. She moves to sit up straight, stretches her arms above her head and lets out a sigh.

"I'm going out for a smoke, sugar," she says, pulling her pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the back pocket of her jeans. He nods at her, and she moves towards the door. Stops. Half turns to look back at him, and he wonders what she's thinking when she says, half seriously, "She probably loved him too. Dying for him, and all."

* * *

By seven in the evening, the bar has grown busier. Between Meg serving customers and shooting leering drunks dirty looks, they amuse themselves by playing twenty questions. So far, Castiel has learned that Megan's favourite colour is currently green, that she is exactly twenty four years, five months and two days old, and that if she could go anywhere in the world, she'd go to Amsterdam.

"Amsterdam is a nice place," he replies. "You'd like it. Incredible architecture."

"It's not the architecture I'm interested in, sweetie," she smiles crookedly, eyebrow raised as if daring him to understand her. A middle-aged man approaches the bar and asks for a whiskey, and Megan turns to reach for a tumbler and pour his drink. She deposits his cash in the till and turns her attention back to Castiel.

"When did you go Amsterdam?" she asks. Castiel doesn't think this is how twenty questions is actually played, but she probably knows better than him, so he follows her lead.

"I've been on and off throughout the years," he replies. "I used to travel a lot."

"Alone?" she asks, eyebrow raised. "Never took the wife?"

"I've never had a wife," he replies, and tells himself Emmanuel's wife doesn't count. "Yes, mostly alone. There's something oddly liberating about surrounding yourself with strangers.

She scrutinises him as she pours someone a vodka. "You're a little anti-social, aren't you?"

"Aren't you?" he deflects, and she grins.

"Me? Nah. Fuckin' love people," she says. A moment later, a middle-aged man gestures at her breasts from his booth at the other side of the room, and she happily sends him a one finger salute. She turns her attention back to Castiel, and tries not to register the angry expression on his face as he glares at the man from across the room.

"Do you miss travelling?" she asks, and Castiel turns back to look at her, a trace of annoyance still etched in the corners of his mouth and downturned eyebrows. His frown lessens when he looks at her.

"No," he answers, "I'm happy here." He realises that, surprisingly, he means it. "Besides, the world will still be out there if I ever want to travel again."

"You're crazy if this place makes you happy," she scoffs, taking a bottle of beer from the fridge beneath the counter and handing it to a young blonde woman. The woman stands next to Castiel, openly staring at him in interest, and Megan takes malicious enjoyment from the fact that his eyes are focussed solely on her.

"It's not really the place," he says, and Megan feels a sudden jolt of warmth in her abdomen when she turns and sees the look on his face. She distracts herself with running the woman's cash through the till and handing her back the correct change.

"You still haven't told me what you're doing in this place-" she begins, but she's interrupted by the sound of her phone ringing. She pulls it from her pocket and answers.

"Jason? What's up?" Before he has time to wonder who Jason is, Meg's expression becomes thunderous. "What the hell are you talking about? I've been working since ten this morning. I'm doing a ten hour shift for you and-" she goes quiet for a few seconds, before angrily cutting in. "I don't care what she says! I don't care if she feels sick. I don't care if her fuckin' legs fall off! I'm supposed to be picking up my ten-year-old kid sister from her friend's house. I have to finish at eight. I'm not doing another six hours-" she's cut off again, her mouth pursed in a thin line, and she glares at Castiel while her boss thoroughly chews her out over the phone. Castiel doesn't take it personally. He focuses on the voice on the other end of the line, and hears the conversation as though Meg's boss were right beside him.

He's yelling at her now. Nobody else can take Jackie's shift, and since Megan is already at the bar, she has to take it for her. She can take the shift, or she'll be fired. Castiel briefly entertains the idea of smiting Jason, but ultimately decides against it.

Megan's staring at him intently. She bites her lower lip thoughtfully, and Castiel tries to ignore the sudden jolt of warmth that snakes through him. He's instantly reminded of the way she once felt against him, trapped between the wall and his chest, and the way her lips had moved against his own.

"Cas," she says, and he's unpleasantly jolted back to the present. Her hand is covering the speaker on her phone, but Castiel can still hear Jason roaring at the other end of the line. Her face is almost apologetic, or at least, Castiel thinks, as apologetic as Meg could possibly be. "I need you do to me a massive favour."

"Yes?" he asks. He'd like to object, but knows he doesn't have much choice. She looks desperate, and if he can save her from her angry boss, he'll most likely do it anyway.

"Can you pick Jill up from her friend's house at eight, take her home, and babysit for a few hours? She'll be going to bed around ten anyway, and I'll be back as soon as I can."

He's entirely uncomfortable with this new situation, but she looks desperate. "Please. There's nobody else. Chloe's mom's kind of a bitch, and I can't see her happy to have Jill stay overnight after looking after her all day."

Castiel nods, and ignores the voice in his head that tells him he has enough trouble looking after potted plants, let alone a human child. "Yes. Okay." It's almost worth it for the grin that spreads across Megan's face and the way her eyes light up with relief. She uncovers her phone speaker and places it to her ear again.

"Shut up, Jason, would you? Fine. I'll do it. But I am not working tomorrow. Agreed? You're welcome, by the way." She hangs up abruptly and groans loudly, before looking back at him. "You're a lifesaver."

"I don't mind," he says, "But are you sure your sister won't mind me looking after her?"

"Oh, trust me," Meg drawls, smirk in place and eyes glittering, "She won't mind at all. She thinks you're an angel."

He almost chokes on his beer. "What?"

"Seriously," Meg replies, unaware of Castiel's alarm, "She thinks you're the best thing since sliced bread."

"Oh," he replies, understanding the context.

"I'll phone ahead in a while and tell Chloe's mom you're getting her instead of me," Meg says. "I'd rather deal with her than Jason anyway."

"Your boss sounds like an ass-butt," Castiel empathises. She looks at him, stunned, before a corner of her mouth quirks upwards and she laughs, long and hard.

* * *

A/N: One day, I'm going to write a story where all the place names aren't shamelessly lifted from Silent Hill trivia.

I agonised for ages over this chapter, and somehow battered it all out in one day. If you don't like all these heart-to-heart scenes involving Jill, then, get over it. Not everything in this story revolves around Megstiel, and that scene is important. Jill is a central character, and you're going to see why pretty soon.

There was so much more I wanted to add in here, but at just under 6000 words, I'm cutting it pretty fine. Sorry if it seemed like this chapter was all dialogue and no actual substance, as a result. The story will be significantly moved along in the next chapter (in fact, there's only really two or three chapters left to go).

Moving on, I'm using this space to shamelessly advertise a future story I'm planning on uploading. I hope you all like X Files. Or, rather, FBI government conspiracy stories with Team Free Will as the main characters. I've always thought Castiel would make a good Scully. Keep an eye out for that one, if you like.

Thanks for reading! Reviews are lovely. You're lovely. If you leave one. Fankssss bye.


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